The MobileMe changeover: Everything you need to know

Apple's switch from .Mac to MobileMe and all its new features is fast …

Now that we know exactly when Apple will take .Mac out behind the woodshed and flip the switch on MobileMe, it's time to make sure we have packed our bags properly for the move. After all, you don't want to show up in Apple's green new pastures to find out that you forgot all your bookmarks or you can't use your .Mac MobileMe account to chat anymore. We have rounded up everything you need to know, including a few overlooked gotchas, about switching from .Mac to MobileMe.

The basics

Let's start by getting some of the rudimentary stuff out of the way. These things may seem obvious to some of you in the audience, but you don't want to be "that guy" who forgot something that even grandma nailed without a hitch.

If you currently have a .Mac account and sync information periodically, it's a good idea to sync all your Macs before Wednesday evening at 6pm PT. The MobileMe upgrade and account changeover should go smoothly, but considering .Mac's sketchy reliability in the past, there's no sense in inviting trouble.

A potentially significant catch that some .Mac customers will need to factor into their plans is that support for Mac OS X 10.3 Panther will be joining .Mac behind the aforementioned woodshed. Once MobileMe takes the throne, only Mac OS X 10.4.11 and higher are supported, and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is, of course, "strongly recommended to allow you to take full advantage of all that MobileMe has to offer."

Last on the list of basics for MobileMe is to make sure you have a copy of the latest shipping version of Safari, Firefox, or Internet Explorer, the only three browsers that MobileMe officially supports. It's reasonable to assume that other browsers based on WebKit and Gecko (OmniWeb, Camino, and Flock to name just a few) may work at least decently with MobileMe's web services, but you'll likely run into the CYA "this browser don't play well with our toys" disclaimer.

What's new

With MobileMe, Apple is focusing a lot of its branding on the service being "Exchange for the rest of us." While most of .Mac's features are making the transition unscathed (more on that in a bit), Apple has introduced Exchange-like Push for near-instant, OTA (over the air) synchronization of contacts, calendar appointments, Safari bookmarks, and e-mail. This is a pretty big deal when you consider that MobileMe is probably the first consumer-friendly push service that includes all the other extras we've either come to love or hate about .Mac. It also means that Apple stepped up its productivity game and brought it to the web.

Calendar

MobileMe's zippy synchronization of key information will work across your Mac, iPhone, iPod touch, and even a Windows PC through a yet-to-be-released Outlook plug-in, but the service will also bring new web tools for managing this information online. MobileMe webmail will get redesigned for an even more desktop-software-like look and feel, Address Book web access will get a refresh, but most importantly, iCal will finally have a web-based twin with all the AJAXy drag-and-drop goodness you could want.

Thanks to MobileMe's push service, when you make a change to an appointment on your iPhone, MobileMe's calendar web UI will reflect it immediately and iCal on your Mac will keep right in step. No more docking to sync, no more waiting an hour for .Mac sync to do its thing, and no more having to trigger a sync manually.

Plenty of customers, of course, have been asking for this kind of instant, OTA sync to work for other types of synced information (namely iTunes media), but that's a different animal entirely. There's no doubt that syncing new music, TV shows, movies, and podcasts instantly OTA to an iPhone or iPod touch is on Apple's own wish list. Syncing many MB and GB of chunky media, however, is quite different from a few bits of data in a contact, a calendar appointment, or an e-mail's unread status. We'll all have to wait on that one for now.

E-mail

With the new MobileMe branding that moves away from its previously Mac-centric nature, Apple is also introducing a new @me.com domain for e-mail addresses that's already working for existing members. Current .Mac users will be able to choose whether to keep their @mac address or switch to an @me address, and both will work in iChat and other AIM clients for chatting (with one major caveat we'll cover in a minute). No matter the choice, though, messages sent to one address will automatically forward to the other. This means that if you opt to convert your steve@mac.com address to steve@me.com, messages sent to the former will automatically forward with no effort on your part.

If current .Mac customers go the @me.com route for e-mail and they use a desktop client, there isn't much to change. Previous settings like mail.mac.com and smtp.mac.com simply need to change "mac" to "me" and they're all set (so: mail.me.com). Don't forget to change to @me.com for authentication as well.

Note, though, that new MobileMe accounts won't get a choice between @mac and @me account names. Current .Mac members will be the only ones who get @mac e-mail addresses and iChat names, as MobileMe will only offer @me account names. This may be a big deal for chat users, which we'll address in a moment.

Gallery and iDisk

The other notable changes to MobileMe come mainly in the form of better web UIs for Gallery and iDisk. Right now, Gallery isn't much more than a pretty showcase for photos and albums that users mainly manage and upload via iPhoto '08 and Aperture 2. An upload-via-e-mail option is present for gallery owners and can even be toggled for the public, but MobileMe's Gallery improvements bring more power and management via the web for both users and visitors.

Gallery owners will be able to log in through a browser and organize photos, arrange them in albums, and adjust typical gallery settings like an album's public status, downloading of optimized or full-res images, and more.

While Apple hasn't said much about iDisk changes that will affect desktop users (though a speed and performance boost certainly wouldn't hurt), iDisk's web UI is also gaining a more Finder-like interface and much better sharing features. Browsing iDisk folders and files in a browser will resemble the Finder's handy Column view, and any file can easily be shared—not just files in iDisk/Public. Clicking to share a file in MobileMe's web UI presents a pop-up e-mail dialog that integrates with your address book, and a custom download link is sent to your recipient(s), complete with the option of a password and even an expiration date for the download.

Bigger is better

Last but not least, the default MobileMe storage space is increasing from 10GB for an individual account to 20GB, with the option to purchase even more. This space can still be allocated between mail and iDisk/Gallery/iWeb storage space any way you need. Oh yeah, speaking of iWeb, the changeover will be pretty seamless for published sites, and the Personal Domain option will continue to just work. Addresses change to web.me.com/user, and while we haven't found it directly stated anywhere, it's safe to assume that the previous web.mac.com structure will redirect just fine.

The gotchas

Since we have to wait to get our hands on MobileMe to see if Apple has answered some of .Mac's long-standing complaints, we can't speak to whether syncing reliability or iDisk upload speeds have improved. (To iDisk's credit, however, we know we read an Apple support doc that explained how iDisk uploads are throttled a little so they don't strain the rest of the OS too much. We'd appreciate it if you could help us find said doc.) Through Apple's own announcements, however, we do know of a few caveats that all .Mac users and potential MobileMe customers should be aware of.

Gleaned from Apple's .Mac to MobileMe transition FAQ, MobileMe removes an advantage of using an account e-mail address for an iChat/AIM username. While both @mac and @me addresses can be used for chatting, @me addresses will not continue to function as AIM accounts after a MobileMe account is cancelled. This adds a subtle (but important) layer of unfortunate lock-in for new MobileMe users and anyone who converts all their @mac address to @me addresses. I, personally, am opting to stick with @mac in part for this very reason, in part until we can find out more after MobileMe launches.

After MobileMe's introduction, a number of other less-famous .Mac features are going to disappear completely. These include .Mac Slides (photos will remain in iDisk, but slides will no longer work), iCards, and perhaps most importantly, web access to Safari bookmarks. While "Exchange for the rest of us" is bringing quick OTA syncing of Safari bookmarks between devices, web access for these bookmarks is strangely joining that party behind that woodshed.

Don't worry about the rest

As far as the rest of .Mac's current features are concerned, they should survive the switch to MobileMe without a problem. Application sync—arguably one of .Mac's most appealing features—should remain intact, and third-party apps like Transmit, TextExpander, and Together should be able to keep syncing data just fine. Hopefully, if MobileMe attracts the new wave of eyeballs that Apple is undoubtedly hoping for, we may be able to look forward to even more apps hooking into MobileMe's syncing services down the road.

Let's get ready to MobileMe!

The new gag-inducing brand name aside, the MobileMe changeover sounds like it should be pretty painless. As stated before, all .Mac services (save for e-mail via desktop clients) will become unavailable Wednesday evening at 6pm PT, and they should magically return as MobileMe shortly thereafter. It's a good bet that a number of small updates will appear in Software Update for relevant applications like Mail, iLife '08, and Aperture 2, and after a possible restart we can all get our Exchange-slinging MobileMe on.